By All Means

Dr. Jeremy Friese left a prestigious medical practice at Mayo Clinic to solve one of healthcare’s great headaches: the prior authorization process. Three years later, in December 2020, he sold his venture-backed AI technology company Verata Health to its biggest competitor, Olive, for $120 million. He brought almost the entire Verata team of around 60 with him, and took on the role of president of Olive’s Payer Market. His work to automate the administrative side of health care services continues, now with a much larger team. He’s yet to meet any of them in person or visit Olive’s Ohio headquarters. The entire acquisition transpired virtually during the Covid-19 pandemic. Verata, which was a “Zoom company” with employees spread around the country even pre-Covid, saw the adoption of its software services accelerate during the pandemic. “One of the positives [out of this time] is the way our healthcare system has embraced a new way of working—the adoption of tele-health and a variety of other technologies. There’s a newfound appetite and willingness to bring in tech to solve problems.” Although he spent nearly 20 years in radiology at Mayo Clinic, Friese initially chose medical school with the goal of “solving systemic problems.” His first exposure to the stresses of health care came as a high school sophomore in South Dakota, when his mother was diagnosed with breast cancer. “So much time and angst is wasted sharing information among physicians and with payers,” Friese says. “It causes delays and uncertainty in care, and it hasn’t gotten a whole lot better in the last 20-30 years.” “Helping the system get better through capitalism is something I’m wired to do.” But along the way, Friese got drawn into patient care and became an internationally recognized doctor. All the while, he took on executive roles on the business side at Mayo and earned an MBA at Harvard. With patient paperwork piling up on his desk and keeping him out of the exam room, he decided to finally take the leap and step away from practice—and his doctor’s salary— to start Verata. “To be an entrepreneur, you have to be a little crazy,” Friese acknowledges. “But I did know that it was a massive problem that would have a massive impact.” Following our conversation with Friese, we go Back to the Classroom with the University of St. Thomas Opus College of Business where Daniel McLaughlin is a senior executive fellow whose research focuses on making healthcare work more effectively. McLaughlin sheds some light on the complexities of the prior authorization process. “Throughout the country there’s been a problem of over treatment or ineffective care.” Both ends of the spectrum add up to billions in waste, he says. “Insurance companies don’t want to pay for either so they set up a complicated system. There’s a real opportunity to use emerging tech tools to make the process easier and cheaper.” The number of medical doctors seeking MBAs, particularly in St. Thomas’s health care business program, continues to grow, McLaughlin says. “There’s an increasing number of physicians who are so frustrated in practice, they want to figure out how to fix the healthcare system.”

Having reached her ultimate career goal before age 30—New York Times best-selling author; staff writer for ESPN—Maria Burns Ortiz turned her attention to a new challenge: promoting equitable education. She’s the co-founder of 7 Generation Games, a mission-based ed-tech startup focused on closing the math gap for students from Native American, Latino, and underserved and rural communities. She started the company with her mom, Anna Maria De Mars, World Judo Champion turned educational psychology professor. Since her days as an eighth grade math teacher, De Mars wanted to make video games to teach kids math, but at the time, the technology didn’t exist. With Burns Ortiz’s career at a crossroads, her mom convinced her to take the money she would have spent on an MBA and invest it in starting a business. Eight years later (five, full-time), 7 Generation Games counts more than 40,000 active uses in schools and homes across the country. The company recently received $1 million in grant funding from the U.S. Department of Agriculture for Growing Math, a new learning platform aimed at helping meet the needs of students and educators in Arizona, Minnesota, New Mexico, North Dakota, Oregon, and South Dakota. “There’s a disconnect between what software companies think teachers need, and what they actually use,” says Burns Ortiz, who runs the company from Minneapolis with a team of 11 spread around the country. Although 7 Generation was focused on rural and underserved urban communities pre-pandemic, distance learning has heightened the awareness that “the digital divide is a lot greater than we thought.” When schools closed in early 2020 due to Covid-19, 7 Generation lifted its paywall to get software to teachers. But in some of the communities it serves, nearly half the students don’t have Internet at home. “No one can learn from software they can’t use,” Burns Ortiz says. In the past year, 7 Generation more than doubled its offline game usage, from 40 to 85 percent of its collection. “Making something that seems high tech run on something low tech is really hard,” Burns Ortiz says. “Maybe it’s not the coolest, 3D virtual world, but it runs on a phone.” Despite early difficulties convincing investors, Burns Ortiz and her mom felt strongly about setting up 7 Generation as a for-profit company. “Social impact is not a charity,” Burns Ortiz says. “You can make a positive societal impact and also have that be a profitable enterprise. When it’s non-profit, often that doesn’t encourage people to go in and innovate on solutions.” Her goal now? “I want 7 Generation to be as ubiquitous in the classroom as text books.” After our conversation with Burns Ortiz, we go back to the classroom with the University of St. Thomas Opus College of Business, where Kevin Henderson is a professor of management with a focus on universal design for learning. “We want to give everyone in the classroom an equal opportunity to succeed.” That starts with material that feels relevant to a wide variety of cultures and communities. “It’s so important for students to see themselves represented in curriculum.”

Bizzy Coffee isn’t like most other coffee brands. No coffee shops. No single serve bottles or cans or pods. Bizzy founders Alex French and Andrew Healy are singularly focused on a fast-growing segment of the coffee industry: cold brew. And by staying laser focused, they’ve become the best-selling cold brew brand on Amazon. Meanwhile, their grocery store presence is steadily growing. The momentum they have today is proof that picking a lane can pay off. Determination and a willingness to learning from failures can help. And caffeine is essential. A born entrepreneur, French studied entrepreneurship and finance at the University of St. Thomas and tried as many as 20 different startup ideas before landing on Bizzy with his friend Healy. One of those early attempts was a snowboarding accessory called the Lifty. Its failure to take off gave them a key insight: “no one was searching for it.” So French and Healy studied Google search trends to identify a consumable product people were actively looking for. At the time, the two recent college grads were making their own cold brew coffee at home to save money and it didn’t taste as smooth and sweet as the cold brew from their local coffee house. Both had serious day jobs—French was working in consumer research at General Mills; Healy in research and development engineering for St. Jude Medical. Pooling their knowledge, evenings were devoted to creating a better testing cold brew coffee for home brewers. According to Google, searches for cold brew were growing 100 percent annually. “We just didn’t fully understand how challenging coffee was going to be,” French says. “But we wanted to create a new product for a new consumer entering the coffee category for the first time who doesn’t want to drink Folgers and wants a brand that resonates with their own personal belief system.” Knowing that they were their own target market, French and Healy studied their shopping and consumption patterns. “And so we said to ourselves, let’s go sell something on the internet for the next generation of shopping.” French shares many hard-learned lessons, like a product that sells well on the Internet does not easily translate to stores. The competition for shelf space is tough, and the wrong placement can ruin your odds. And creating a product with the intention of competing with the category leader only works if you can demonstrate that yours is a better value. Mistakes are part of the journey, French says. “You only learn to be an entrepreneur by being an entrepreneur. You will fail, but the faster you fail, the faster you’ll succeed.” For more perspective on the entrepreneurial journey, we go back the classroom with the University of St. Thomas Schulze School of Entrepreneurship where John McVea is an associate professor. “Anybody can say, ‘I like cold coffee.’ What Alex had to do was look at the world the way the market is, the way people are drinking coffee, and say, ‘how could we do that differently?’” Aspiring entrepreneurs often get too hung up on coming up with an original idea, McVea says. “You don’t succeed because of an idea no one thought of. Probably millions of people thought the future is cold coffee. But that’s a far cry from understanding how you build a sustainable business to succeed at cold brew coffee.” What’s even more important than the idea? “You have to love rigorous inquiry,” McVea says. “You have to be able to listen and empathize with others, and you have to enjoy problems coming at you. They love the journey more than the destination.”

Perhaps you’ve noticed when you hit the checkout button on your online purchases there’s often an option to buy now, pay later. It’s reverse layaway—you get the goods now, and you pay them off in a four or six interest free installments. No fees, no need for credit. Young consumers seem to love it and so buy now pay later is being embraced by more and more retailers, from small indie shops to the big direct to consumer brands like Peloton and Warby Parker. The pandemic only accelerated adoption rates and analysts project buy now pay later solutions could rack up $680 billion in transaction volume worldwide by 2025. There are several big players in the field, like Afterpay and Affirm, which hit a $24 billion valuation after going public in January. But that hasn’t deterred Sezzle, a Minneapolis-based buy now pay later platform that went public on the Australian securities exchange in 2019 and continues to gain traction in the U.S. “I want to win,” says Sezzle founder/CEO Charlie Youakim, who was featured on TCB's Tech 20 in 2020. “We’re still in last place in the payment space, even though we’re having success. That’s what drives me. I know we can beat them. We just have to keep on innovating and listening to our stakeholders.” Yoaukim didn’t set out to create a payment platform. His is a winding founder’s tale that includes many startup signatures: sleeping on a couch, a fallout with a co-founder, a failure that eventually led to the big idea. "Start small," he advises other founders. "Find that first customers. Make it work great. Listen to that customer. When they have issues, fix them. When they have ideas, do them. Keep on walking forward." Sezzle launched in 2017 as a payment processing platform. Retailers liked the model because it was less expensive than credit card fees, but consumers didn’t latch on. “We ran with the idea that [a digital payment option] was a preference," Youakim says. "But what if it’s not a preference? What if it’s a lack of access? We flipped the hypothesis. We had to build a credit system.” Investors weren’t initially sold on the pivot. Youakim shares the process of winning them over, the advantages of going public in Australia, why buy now, pay later resonates with consumers, and how he’s placing purpose alongside profit with new products designed to help consumers build their credit scores. Everything is clicking now: Sezzle doubled its headcount in 2020 to more than 200 employees. The Minneapolis-based company just recently announced its certification as a B Corp, emphasizing its mission to "financially empower the next generation." “You just keep on pushing ahead,” Youakim says of building a business. “It’s like mountain climbing. Know where the pinnacle is, and keep picking a path with the goal that you want to get to the top.” Following our conversation with Youakim, we go Back to the Classroom with University of St. Thomas Opus College of Business. Consumer behavior expert Kim Sovell, a participating adjunct professor of marketing is tracking the rapid adoption of buy now pay later platforms, particularly among younger consumers. Usage skyrocketed from 2019 to 2020—200 percent among Gen Z; 86 percent among millennials. “It allows an individual to get immediate satisfaction out of a purchase but not go into debt.” But Sovell worries that the interest free, penalty free offers Sezzle and its competitors currently offer may evaporate. “I think they’ll start charging individuals that miss payments. I think that’s going to change. I also think people need to be aware: it does entice buying more.”

Growing up in and around computer labs, with a mother who was a trailblazer in computer sciences, Yu Sunny Han developed a knack for solving problems through technology. He built computer games as a kid and sold his first piece of software at age 12, requesting the $500 fee be paid in quarters to play arcade games. Determined to chart his own course, Han chose chemistry as his college major but says “most of the problems I solved in school ended up leading me back to computer sciences.” So it happened that while working as a business consultant, he identified a problem in the manufacturing industry: a lack of modern business software to connect companies. “Manufacturing adopted so many aspects of technology first…20 years ago, but they haven’t changed since. And they expect it to be a painful process to update. I thought: what if all of these companies and people were connected: how much faster could we make stuff?” Still, it took Han a year and a half to quit a good-paying job and start a company with his own savings. He didn't aspire to be an entrepreneur. “No one else was doing it, and it needed to get done.” He built Fulcrum, a cloud-based software system that supports the business of manufacturing for a new generation of production. That’s everything from planning to quality control to inventory. Han estimates that as many as 12 million American manufacturers use outdated software. Fulcrum is poised to help the multi-trillion dollar industry take a giant leap forward, and that’s why investors are lining up. Fulcrum raised just over $3 million dollars in 2020 to expand its platform. He's listed on TCB's 2021 Tech 20. The momentum didn’t happen overnight. “We started out too unfocused, trying to serve every industry,” Han says. “We honed in on where we knew how to deliver the most value.” The number of customers on Fulcrum's platform multiplies every month and Han keeps hiring to stay ahead. The seed funding “added momentum to hire ahead of need.” In doing so, Han thinks as carefully about company culture as he does software—extra challenging in a pandemic, and with employees spread across the country. “There’s always so much to do, but we have to be able to say, no matter what, we’re going to get together online and play Among Us, or hang out on Zoom. We make time for every new hire to be grilled with questions from the team. We talk about everyone we lay off—what did they do well, and what could be better. What gels a team together is working on things, overcoming challenges, and being really transparent and honest with each other.” A product of the Twin Cities tech community, Han saw the great potential of the ‘80s, in the heyday of Control Data and IBM, and watched it slip away as companies were acquired and tech talent moved to the coasts. But a new generation of modern software companies like Code 42, Jamf, and his own, coupled with new seed funds like Ryan Broshar’s Matchstick Ventures and Mary Grove’s Bread & Butter (both previously featured on By All Means), gives him hope for the future of tech in Minnesota. “I wish people would think bigger. It takes as much effort to build something small as something big, and the value is compounded greatly.” After our conversation with Han we go Back to the Classroom with University of St. Thomas Opus College of Business professor Lisa Abendroth, academic director for Business in a Digital World. “Because of social media we take for granted the ease of connection today. He saw the pain points in manufacturing and how to deliver unique value to the market.” Of course, it takes humans to build smart technology. Abendroth points out the power of building a collaborative team. “We often take for granted the importance of a Taco Tuesday or group Pictionary. You have to be cohesive and communicate. Sunny’s product is trying to do that, too.”

“Video games are an amazing covert teaching mechanism,” says Jules Porter, founder of Seraph 7 Studios, a Minneapolis-based videogame development studio on a mission to fight racism and build empathy by creating diverse characters and games that show the BIPOC community in a positive light. The epiphany hit as she toured Rome for the first time and realized she knew her way around because she had learned the city through a video game. Porter was a law student at the time, a path she decided to pursue following a troubling string of shootings of Black teenagers by white police officers. “I just felt so powerless,” Porter says. She listened to a Tedx Talk given by Dr. Artika Tyner, a University of St. Thomas law professor who said: “Law is the language of power.” And that solidified Porter’s decision to enroll. But midway through, Porter began to question whether it was enough. “The law can provide consequences, it can help set policy. But the issue, if a person doesn’t even see us as human, there’s something in the heart that the law can’t reach. How do we build empathy from the inside out?” Porter’s answer: video games. “Eighty percent of Black youths play video games, but only 3 percent of the protagonists look like us and they’re not even good guys. It’s so rare to find positive Black characters,” Porter says, pointing out that the number of BIPOC individuals and women who work as gaming programmers is negligible. “The decision makers are white men…in order for us to change the narrative and put more positive images out there, we need BIPOC folks to be part of the creative side.” Porter started sketching out game ideas while finishing law school. For a while, she clerked for a judge by day, and worked on her startup by night. Being accepted to the Finnovation Lab accelerator allowed her to finally focus on the business. Additional mentorship and funding comes from the American Express x iFund Women of Color 100 for 100 program. Porter’s first console video game, due out later this year, is called Elder Battle Royale and features an even split of male and female characters from diverse backgrounds. The characters are also seniors who fight enemies with weaponized walkers. There’s another side to Seraph 7 Studios. Porter wants to raise up a more diverse generation of coders by teaching BIPOC students to code. “There’s a lot of untapped opportunity.” The early attention Porter has received for her efforts, coupled with a string of grants and awards, could create undue pressure for a first time founder. But Porter says she feels driven, and optimistic. She thinks often of a favorite Oprah Winfrey quote: “Don’t focus on being successful; focus on being substantial and the success will come.” Following our conversation with Porter, we go Back to the Classroom with AnnMarie Thomas, professor of entrepreneurship at the University of St. Thomas Opus College of Business and director of the UST Playful Learning Lab where she's observed firsthand how much kids absorb through play. “We know that kids are engaged differently in their learning when they’re having fun, seeing people who look like them,” Porter says. Thomas also points out how Porter’s eclectic interests—gaming, law, travel, theology—led to her idea for Seraph 7. “The secret to new ideas: they don’t come from just business classes; they come from all aspects of life. Ideas are everywhere,” says Thomas, pointing out that a liberal arts college like St. Thomas was able to support Porter as her interests and focus evolved. “Ideas are everywhere. Put yourself in situations for lifelong learning. Jules brings one heck of a toolbox to everything she does.”

Never in modern history has office space been more disrupted than during the Covid-19 pandemic. And as CEOs contemplate how to bring workers back—whether they’ll bring workers back—architect and commercial designer Betsy Vohs is helping businesses reconsider the purpose of the office. “When else do you get a chance like this, to rethink the office?” Vohs is the founder and CEO of Studio BV in Minneapolis, a boutique design firm that works across industries, from medical clinics to apartment buildings to the headquarters for companies such as Digi International, nVent, and Evereve. Studio BV’s pro bono arm, Design Forward, works on projects for non-profit clients. “Good design creates something powerful,” Vohs says. “Space can tell your story.” How does that story change as a result of Covid-19? “Now we know why office space matters,” Vohs says. “We can do a fine job on Zoom, but we can’t innovate, we can’t create culture.” Not one Studio BV client plans a full-time return to the office. Vohs expects more independent work to happen at home, even when it’s safe to come back, so that means fewer cubicles and dedicated workstations while upping the emphasis on what she calls “innovation space.” Take note: Vohs shares some of her favorite design tips and resources. After our conversation with Vohs we go back to the classroom with the University of St. Thomas Opus College of Business. Associate Professor of Management Erica Diehn studies meaningful work, and in the wake of Covid, that includes thinking about where we find meaning, and the important role place plays in creating high quality connections. “Our best work—curiosity, new ideas—that kind of creation doesn’t happen in solitude or when we’re powering through tasks. We need idle space in our brains.” Commuting to the office used to provide that time, and part of the reason working from home is proving stressful to many is that “every second of time is taken up by a present need.” “Stepping into the office can be a relief,” Diehn says, echoing Vohs’ sentiments on the way companies are going to rethink the office. “How do we create environments that reward the fact that I get to go to the office today. How do we make spaces that inspire more of that?”

Renay Dossman built her career with Fortune 500 companies, moving from Cargill to Target, where she found her passion in food innovation. But after years of traveling the world for food trends, developing products, and eventually taking her expertise to Winn-Dixie where she developed concept stores to serve Black and LatinX neighborhoods, Dossman left the corporate world in search of something more. She found her way to the Neighborhood Development Center, a nationally lauded community development financial institution that provides training, small business loans, and incubator space to low income and BIPOC entrepreneurs. “NDC believes in building communities from within,” says Dossman, who became president of the nonprofit in 2019. “They believe in the power of entrepreneurship to develop generational wealth, to develop a community.” That mission resonated with Dossman, who grew up in Chicago public housing projects. “Where I lived, we didn’t have a lot of businesses. If you saw a business owner, they were usually a leader in the community.” NDC has helped more than 6,000 entrepreneurs. The organization estimates that for every dollar put into a local business, $40 goes back to the community. And the entrepreneurs who come to NDC don’t have options like angel investors or friends and family funding. “These are people coming to this country – what America is about,” Dossman says. “You should be able to come here and do things and make it. They just need a leg up, just need an opportunity.” NDC co-owns the Midtown Global Market in Minneapolis, home to many ethnic restaurants and retail businesses started by immigrants from all parts of the world. The market was particularly hard hit by the pandemic—many of its vendors don’t even have websites, let alone the ability to offer e-commerce or delivery. So NDC introduced tech support, reduced rent, and stepped up loans. And just when it felt like they were getting a handle on the economic impact, George Floyd was killed eight blocks from the market. “It just felt like everything stopped. I honestly didn’t know how to go on.” But there was no time to grieve as the market and the small businesses that surround it were threatened, and in many cases, destroyed, in protests that turned violent. “These are immigrants—people trying to make a living, and they’re trying to burn the market down,” Dossman recalls of that harrowing week in May, choking back the tears. “These were not people from our community who know what that market means.” The work continues, from more funding to help with rebuilding efforts to legal assistance and culturally specific mental health services. “We dug in and stepped up. I’ll do everything I can to keep these entrepreneurs going. I’m not giving up.” Following our conversation with Dossman, we go Back to the Classroom with University of St. Thomas Opus College of Business associate dean and diversity, equity, and inclusion ambassador Nakeisha Lewis to talk about disparities in funding for entrepreneurs of color. “Minority businesses are three times more likely to be denied credit, they rarely VC funding, they often pay higher interest rates. There are distinct differences and gaps in how they’re treated as entrepreneurs,” Lewis says. The answer, she says, is more tools, resources, and a fair chance at capital. “As we’re designing solutions for entrepreneurs, they should reflect local realities. We need programming that speaks to what’s culturally relevant and important to these groups.”

Behind every plant-based burger, oat milk latte, and protein shake is one essential ingredient: pea protein. Without it, there’s no Beyond Meat. Minneapolis-based PURIS, fueled by a $100 million investment from Cargill, is the largest U.S. manufacturer of pea protein, and PURIS CEO Tyler Lorenzen says the company is just getting started. “Anything currently consumed as animal protein, PURIS is going to solve with plants to build a more efficient, sustainable, resilient food system,” Lorenzen says. “If we can do it in the U.S., we can do abroad.” Lorenzen didn’t expect to be leading a division of PURIS Holdings, the company started by his visionary father Jerry Lorenzen in 1985 in Iowa to develop high protein crops. Tyler Lorenzen played professional football for the New Orleans Saints, which won Super Bowl XLIV his rookie year. But when his football career ended sooner than expected—“I got cut,” Lorenzen deadpans—he quickly shifted to the other field that had figured prominently in his life thanks to his father’s work as a plant breeder: the farm field. “My dad saw in the mid-‘80s that eating animals to get protein was not sustainable. We needed to grow plants to feed people. And if we can make plants higher in protein, we can build a more efficient food system. That was the business my dad started, and the business we operate at scale today.” With the support of Cargill, PURIS will open a new pea protein processing plant this year in Dawson, Minn. Lorenzen expects the business to double in 2021 as PURIS continues to make strides in regenerative agriculture—from seed to shelf. “How do you create something game changing? It’s this concept of not being afraid to fail,” Lorenzen says. “You’ve got to be willing to take risks to do things that can change the world.” His goal is lofty: improve the health of people and planet. But he relates that mission back to football. “Having the drive to do things bigger than myself—that’s what sports has helped to create. Winning is so much better than losing. So we try to win as much as possible.” Fun fact: Tom Brady’s TB12 plant-based protein mixes are made with PURIS pea protein. After our conversation with Lorenzen about innovation and the future of food, we go Back to the Classroom with the University of St. Thomas Opus College of Business. Executive Fellow and adjunct marketing professor Craig Herkert encourages entrepreneurs to “do something you believe in.” “I don’t know that we can point to any successful business person who says the goal was to get rich. The goal is do so something big, something that matters.”

After 15 years at Google, Mary Grove made a sharp career turn that baffled many Silicon Valley insiders. She decided to become a venture capital investor—in Minnesota. “We got a lot of raised eyebrows…it didn’t necessarily make linear sense.” But Grove looked ahead, thinking: “where is the future of the innovation economy going to be written?” Serving as founding director of Google for Startups, supporting entrepreneurs in more than 100 countries gave Grove a taste of the innovation happening far beyond Silicon Valley. She joined Steve Case’s Rise of the Rest Seed Fund with a focus on Midwest ventures. In 2020, she co-founded her own VC firm with entrepreneur Brett Brohl called Bread & Butter Ventures—a nod to her adopted home state and to Minnesota’s deep industry expertise and corporate connections. Bread & Butter focuses on early-stage ventures in ag tech, med tech and enterprise software—with an emphasis not only on the products, but the people. Of the 36 companies they’ve invested in so far, 43 percent have a founder of color; 30 percent are female. “We invest in team, team, team, product, market, traction,” Grove says emphasizing that the product might change, but “if we pick the right team, we’ll find the answer.” She believes in providing opportunities to entrepreneurs who don’t fit the mold, and that starts early. Grove is the co-founder and executive director of Silicon North Stars, a nonprofit that she and her husband Steve founded in 2013 to help young Minnesotans from underserved communities pursue careers in tech. She also serves on the boards of Vital Voices, the Minneapolis Foundation, and the Techstars Foundation. Grove talks about the experience of working for one of the ultimate Silicon Valley startups, offers advice for entrepreneurs who seek funding, and discusses how Covid-19 will change the innovation economy. After our conversation we go Back to the Classroom with University of St. Thomas Opus College of Business. Associate professor of entrepreneurship John McVea points out several takeaways that have contributed to Grove’s success in tech without being a technologist. “She loves to find new areas, dive deep, learn fast, and immerse herself. Critical thinking will never go out of date.” Don’t be afraid of failure, he adds. “Reach for partners, take small risks. Start where you are—know what you know, who you know, and build out from there.”

In the 1990s, when Lee Wallace told business schools she was interested in studying the intersection of mission and money, they steered her into public policy. It was a time before B-corps and one-for-one brands. “Purpose” wasn’t the business buzzword it is today. But even armed with that master’s degree in public policy, Wallace continued to believe in the power of doing good while doing well. Eventually she found her way to a for-profit company founded on a mission to help farmers. That was Peace Coffee, an early champion of the fair trade model to create a transparent and sustainable system that directly benefits farmers and their communities. “The thing that’s so amazing about being presented with the opportunity to run a business founded to do the right thing is authenticity,” says Wallace, who came on as CEO in 2002 and bought the business in 2018 from its founding nonprofit, the Institute for Agriculture & Trade Policy. Today, Wallace is a recognized leader in social enterprise business, as well as fair trade enterprises and specialty coffee importers. She holds leadership roles in the Climate Collaborative and the B corps movement. And she doesn’t apologize for Peace Coffee’s success, because selling more coffee means purchasing more coffee beans at fair prices from farming cooperatives around the world. With a new eco-friendly Minneapolis manufacturing facility, Peace was well positioned at the beginning of the Covid-19 crisis to respond to the sudden spike in coffee bean sales for home brewing. In 2020, Peace Coffee doubled its store accounts with Target and added 70 more Whole Foods stores. Despite losing the 15 percent of sales that came from restaurants, theaters, and offices, Wallace says she expects to end the year up 17 percent. But the challenges persist. The Peace Coffee headquarters is just off East Lake Street, near the Minneapolis Police Third Precinct that was burned down in protests following George Floyd’s killing. She talks about what it will take to restore the multicultural neighborhood’s vibrancy. And although it had not yet been announced publicly at the time of this conversation, Wallace shared that Peace Coffee is getting out of the coffee shop business to focus on growing wholesale. But even in that, she found a way to make it count, by partnering with nonprofit Wildflyer Coffee, which provides jobs to homeless youth. After our conversation with Wallace, we go Back to the Classroom with the University of St. Thomas Opus College of Business. Case Frid is an assistant professor in the department of entrepreneurship whose work focuses on how business relates to community. “A corporate purpose is about your core reason for being and the impact your organization wants to have on the world,” Frid says. “It’s got to be relational, not transactional.”

Have you ever come up with what you thought was a really clever social media handle, sure to be your key to fame and fortune, only to find it’s been taken? Ahmed El Shourbagy is the envy of all would-be influencers. He’s the guy who grabbed the handle @dogsofinstagram in 2011. It happened not with a business plan in mind—influencer marketing wasn’t even a thing back then in the early days of Instagram—it was just a fun way to gather cute images of dogs, like his own Boston terrier/pug mix, Lucy. But as the following quickly grew to hundreds, thousands, and then millions, Ahmed and his now-wife Ashley, whom he met on day 10 of @dogsofinstagram, started seeing possibilities. They also saw the limitations of building a brand on a social media platform. Ahmed and Ashley parlayed a social media following that now stands at 4.7 million into a retail brand and platform they own. Lucy & Co. is a direct-to-consumer brand specializing in stylish dog accessories and apparel (the likes of which you might find on @dogsofinstagram). It took a while to find its footing, but Lucy & Co. it is now the fastest growing and most lucrative part of their business, with demand accelerated in 2020 thanks to a pandemic uptick in dog ownership and online shopping. Ahmed and Ashley talk about the paths that led them to entrepreneurship, the evolution of influencer marketing, and the transition from founder to CEO of a growing company. Then we go Back to the Classroom with the University of St. Thomas Opus College of Business. Retail marketing expert Kim Sovell, participating adjunct marketing faculty, says the Covid-19 pandemic has accelerated conversion to online shopping. “We’ve seen 10 years worth of changes in the way we shop in just a few months,” she says. Her best advice to retail brands launching today: “Know your consumers at a granular level.”

“Sales will take you anywhere.” That skill took Jill Blashack Strahan from a small farm town where she ran a café and didn’t dare to dream much bigger to founder and CEO of national meal prep brand Tastefully Simple. At its peak in 2008, Tastefully Simple hit $143 million in sales with 20,000 sales associates executing home parties in small towns and big cities across the country. Mission: bringing people together to answer that age-old question, “What are we going to eat for dinner?” But after hitting that peak, sales began to slide. And slide. For 11 straight years, Tastefully Simple lost ground. For nearly seven years, there was no profit whatsoever. Strahan invested her own money to keep the company afloat—ignoring the advice of several turnaround consultants. “I just believed in my heart it was not time to give up on this.” Indeed, Tastefully Simple is once again profitable. With a much leaner executive team and renewed focus on sales and marketing training, Tastefully Simple was well positioned to pivot to virtual parties during the Covid-19 pandemic and has benefitted from renewed interest in home cooking and a desire to socialize—even if over Zoom—around food. Strahan takes us on her entrepreneurial—the jobs that led to her a-ha moment and the sacrifice it took to pull it off. “Fear is a great motivator,” she says. But what would a business professor have told her during the dark days of declining sales? After our conversation with Strahan, we go Back to the Classroom with the University of St. Thomas Opus College of Business. Professor David Deeds, the Schulze Endowed Chair in Entrepreneurship points out the fundamental difference between founder and CEO. “There’s a commitment and passion in an entrepreneur that is different than in a CEO. In terms of economics, she should have found a buyer. But from a personal standpoint, it made sense to keep going.”

“Our vision is to be a role model for inclusion in the industry,” says Rosemary Ugboajah, founder and CEO of Neka Creative, a Minneapolis-based brand development agency that makes inclusion a centerpiece of every project it takes on through a proprietary process dubbed Inclusivity Marketing. She entered the advertising industry without many preconceptions, having grown up primarily in Nigeria, without television. While in college in London to study engineering, she found herself drawn to design; an opportunity to learn the business side of advertising led her to the University of Minnesota. Ugboajah started her agency a decade ago, after years of working in other agencies and for Target Corp. She calls Neka Creative her “protest movement”—a response to stereotypes being perpetuated in marketing and a lack of diversity in the field. Her efforts toward inclusion included eliminating set office hours and diverse hiring practices. “We made a commitment and we’re still working on it. You’re always working on it.” The racial reckoning sparked by the death of George Floyd left Ugboajah feeling frustrated. “I was so angered by all the commitment emails I received—‘We’re committed to racial equity; we’re committed to diversity and inclusion.' I kept reading for concrete action steps, thinking: there’s no plan here. You have to tell us what you’re going to measure….People don’t want to stay in an uncomfortable place, but there’s no quick fix to becoming inclusive.” Ugboajah shares how her upbringing in Nigeria and London influenced her views on equity and inclusion, and steps businesses can take to move toward transformative change. After our conversation, we go Back to the Classroom with the University of St. Thomas Opus College of Business diversity, equity and inclusion ambassador Nakeisha Lewis. “It’s a great time for making change, holding people accountable,” Lewis says. “My suggestion: think about what are some actionable things we can hold our organizations to. Business organizations understand metrics: recruitment, retention, how are we ensuring voices are amplified.”

It’s a good time to be in the business of selling immunity. Minneapolis-based wellness company So Good So You makes plant-based juice shots packed with probiotics that support the immune and digestive system. Each variety is named for the “need’ it addresses: Energy, Sleep, Detox, and the No. 1 seller, Immunity. At the start of 2020, the 2-ounce So Good So You shots were sold at 3,000 stores; now they’re at more than 4,000 stores in 47 states including Target, Publix, and Sprouts. The company, which has the backing of investors, managed to meet and exceed its 2020 sales projections and hit profitability. “What the pandemic has done is accelerate this movement of people understanding that investing proactively and managing their own health pays dividends when it comes to their immunity,” says co-founder Rita Katona. In 2014, she left a corporate job at Target Corp. to start a health and wellness company with her husband Eric Hall, a serial entrepreneur. It started as a cold-pressed juice café called Juice So Good, which expanded to three Minneapolis locations. Juice shots were simply an item on the menu, but became so popular, Katona and Hall decided to packaging them for wholesale and quickly realized the shots were a far bigger opportunity. “In entrepreneurship, you can’t let any single failure stop you,” Hall says. “You have to keep iterating.” So Good So You recently introduced its biggest innovation to date: a sustainable bottle it calls the BtrBtl that features a proprietary additive which allows it to biodegrade in landfills at an accelerated rate. “Everything we do goes through the filter of is it the best we can do at this moment for the environment?” Hall says. “This a long-term investment that is authentic to who we are, but we did it because we think it’s the right thing to do.” It’s one of many things the couple loves about building their own company: “As a company, you can do more good in the world than you can as an individual.” Katona and Hall talk about their very different paths to entrepreneurship, the opportunities ahead in the wellness space, and the importance of being willing to pivot. Afterwards, we go Back to the Classroom with the University of St. Thomas Opus College of Business. Professor David Deeds, the Schulze Endowed Chair in Entrepreneurship, emphasizes the important of listening to consumers in the early days of a startup.